Greensprings unveils school for children with special needs

To help parents and the society in providing quality teaching and learning to special needs children, Greensprings Educational Services, recently unveiled the Anthos House, a school purposely designed to cater for the education of children with special needs.

Executive Director of Greensprings Schools, Mrs. Lai Koiki, who spoke during the launch, said children with special needs must be given opportunity to learn and explore new things.

According to her, there is a need for children with special needs to become independent and be reintegrated into the system. She said this is the reason Anthos House was birthed to provide holistic and individualised training to such individuals.

“The worst nightmare to parents that have children with special needs is usually, how those kids that are dependent on them will cope when they are gone. If we are able to provide such an outlet for such people, then we would have achieved our objectives. We have sensitised people on the need to identify with children with special needs because it is not about Greensprings School. It is for advocacy. It is about the society being able to pull together to give support to parents that have this kind of children.”

“We are planning to have a boarding facility such that parents can send students that are not regular here and have a break from taking care of them. So, we are happy to do this. I think every child can learn something no matter the level of their disability, once they can access education, they can achieve their dreams.”

Principal of Anthos House, Dr. Kimberly Scollard, on her part, said the world need to recognise that there are abilities in every child, regardless of what he or she is diagnosed of. She said opportunity should be given to every individual to discover those abilities and used them to serve humanity.

She said, “We have group and individual programmes, a variety of therapies they would use to stabilise themselves, a place where you can learn about your child’s issues and how best to deal with them.

This is a place for children who cannot access the right curriculum in their various schools to come and receive the right education. This is a place parents can trust that the best is being done for their individual child.”

Also, Founder, Benola Cerebral Palsy Initiative, Mr. Femi Gbadebo said he is overwhelmed that Greensprings have come up with this initiative.

“We need to understand the purpose and meaning of inclusion, a child being disabled means they may not be able to cope with the normal class room environment, so we have to first put the child in an environment where they can be assessed and then determine a certain level of what is termed independent living,” he said.

Gbadebo said there is urgent need to get the right teachers who will understand the way to teach these particular children because, “what Greensprings has done is a fantastic first step and we know Nigerians would emulate them.”